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Nearly all the colours of Diane's outfit/style/nail polish pop up over and over all season long in every storyline and setting. Lots of baby blue, teal, red, that raspberry colour. That's just one example, but yeah, lots of visual unity going on here.

it's crazy that Lynch at first wanted to make this with the same digital cameras he used on "Inland Empire"! as much as i like "Inland Empire" i am really glad that didn't happen. i think the camera they decided on using is a nice middle ground between that style and the more cinematic style of Lynch's earlier career. i'm still missing the look of DKL images shot on film though.

so visually, which scenes were the best looking in your opinion? i mean we have the start of episode 3 and most of episode 8 which was all visual glory, but i'm thinking of more "regular" scenes if you catch my drift (no Red Room, visual effects, etc.).

one that sticks out a lot to me is the entire introduction of Mister C - from the night time driving to "American Woman" to the entry to Otis and Buella's place to the meeting with Darya and Ray. everything about that scene is great, the night light, the camera angles, the lingering on faces, the music and sound design. just beautiful! great introduction to Mister C as a character too... especially as it was the first time we saw any incarnation of Cooper for years and years. they certainly didn't fumble that opportunity and all the actors did a wonderful job. you can see that Lynch cast some people based purely on their special looks, without much regard to acting skills - like Buella for example.

overall the night scenes had much more impact on me than the day time shooting which often looked quite "ordinary", which is understandable considering it's a documentary type of camera. for example i loved the look of the interiors of Janey-E and Cooper's house when shot at night. the one day time scene that comes to my mind as impressive and outstanding is from episode 14 with the walk in the woods. some great footage of the majestic woods which we knows hold many spirits and many mysteries. the aerial shots worked wonders.

claaa7 wrote:it's crazy that Lynch at first wanted to make this with the same digital cameras he used on "Inland Empire"! as much as i like "Inland Empire" i am really glad that didn't happen. i think the camera they decided on using is a nice middle ground between that style and the more cinematic style of Lynch's earlier career. i'm still missing the look of DKL images shot on film though.

That's not quite true, I don't think. I'm no expert but "prosumer" cameras have come a long way in the last 10 years. Here's the actual quote from Deming/Indiewire

“David went digital before anybody, at least in his mind, and he shot ‘Inland Empire’ [the one project in which Lynch served as his own DP] with a digital camera. He and I would disagree on the quality of [that camera], but he became very enamored with becoming a small self-contained unit and the sort of do-it-yourself situation,” said Deming. “And he was still very much interested in that type of set-up for this.”

The problem is that with the amount of special effects required for the new season of “Twin Peaks,” smaller, less expensive DSLR cameras have a “rolling shudder” and don’t supply a constant frame, which makes it extremely difficult for visual effects artists.

Deming doesn't name a specific camera, but I think what I said above is true of so-called DSLRs. I'd love to hear from someone more informed on the technical aspects of this how they interpret the comment/how different the show would have looked if they had indeed used them.

I would have loved it if The Return was shot like Inland Empire. Something about it stands on this strange line between rich and visually stunning, and flat and lifeless. Compare Cooper's dinner with the Mitchum brothers or the New York scenes with Steven and Gersten in the woods or Gordon, Albert and Tammy in their room in Buckhorn. The Return's visuals seem to thrive by contrast, and by the darker scenes. For me at least. Inland Empire's use of digital had a rawness and a grit to it. It was so far from the feeling of film that it looped back on itself. The Return did not have rawness by any means, and I missed that. It had a steely unreality.

In the Peter Deming interview, he says how they didn't use Lynch's first choice of camera because of the visual effects, which would have been too difficult to match up the blurry frame rate. The CGI was such an immense part of the feeling of, again, unreality in this iteration of the show. I can't help but wonder how it would have looked if some of the creatures, the Evolution of the Arm or that floating orb that reveals the true Diane, had been sculpted and were in-camera effects. Like Eraserhead.

claaa7 wrote:one that sticks out a lot to me is the entire introduction of Mister C - from the night time driving to "American Woman" to the entry to Otis and Buella's place to the meeting with Darya and Ray. everything about that scene is great, the night light, the camera angles, the lingering on faces, the music and sound design. just beautiful! great introduction to Mister C as a character too... especially as it was the first time we saw any incarnation of Cooper for years and years. they certainly didn't fumble that opportunity and all the actors did a wonderful job. you can see that Lynch cast some people based purely on their special looks, without much regard to acting skills - like Buella for example.

overall the night scenes had much more impact on me than the day time shooting which often looked quite "ordinary", which is understandable considering it's a documentary type of camera. for example i loved the look of the interiors of Janey-E and Cooper's house when shot at night. the one day time scene that comes to my mind as impressive and outstanding is from episode 14 with the walk in the woods. some great footage of the majestic woods which we knows hold many spirits and many mysteries. the aerial shots worked wonders.

Yeah, the scene at Otis' place is one of my all-time favourites. Loved it. And I agree on the daytime/nighttime view - if there was less (or preferably none whatsoever) of the daytime Vegas bollocks, I might have had a somewhat more positive view of the show altogether. Lynch really knows how to make powerful nighttime scenes. But while daytime scenes in the original never felt out of place in the grand scheme of things, The Return's daytime scenes were flat, dull and alienating, in my view. The walk in the woods that you mention was (again, in my view) a stale fart compared to the original series' excursion to the Log Lady's house, and Jaques' cabin.

I saw this on Reddit, props to the user Hybries for the translation. It was an interview with Pierre Buffin, director of BUF who created the visual effects for The Return. There are some interesting quotes that stand out:

"We did most of the special effect in 3D, like the atomic explosion, but most of the 2D effects, like the lights that shine above the machines in Vegas for example, Lynch did them himself, with a small team working at his place."

I guess that explains a lot. 'Primitive' was definitely the intention then, with some of the effects.

"Lynch had asked us to do a starry sky, but the stars weren't moving, which he disliked. Against all logic, we made the stars move, but suddenly they looked like dusts. Then, with a small Sony camera, Lynch refilmed the stars while moving his camera."

I knew he'd use one somehow. I think it's safe to assume that the disturbing shaking of the Experiment in the glass box was also achieved this way.

"He never showed us any pictural reference apart from his own paintings. Everytime we would show him any other reference, it didn't work. We need to stay in his world."